Come and you will see

 

John 1:35-42                                                                               

What do you want?

What are you looking for?

What are you doing?

John, who has just baptized Jesus… recognizes that God’s Spirit is with him and sends his own followers now to follow Jesus. Jesus turns around and there they are… and this is what he asks would-be followers—What do you want?

They don’t really know. We don’t really know. What are we looking for as we come together on a Sunday morning? Healing? Wisdom? A word of hope in a bitter cold and challenging month? Something that satisfies? We can’t exactly put it into words, so like those first followers, we ask our own questions…

Where are you staying, Jesus?

Where are you going? Can you take us with you?

Today, it sounds a little like… could we go to Canada together?

And Jesus invites them, in response to their question about where he’s at… Come and see.

Come… and you will see.

It’s not an invitation to escape. It’s an invitation to deeper engagement.

This is a moment in our national life where many, many people are anxious, worried, concerned about the future…probably for good reason. It’s the month (January) when people who suffer from depression tend to be most depressed. It’s cold. It’s dark. A few of you love winter… others are just trying to endure. Through our news we know, it’s a time when people are so divided about what to do and how to move forward that we belittle our opponents, then struggle with our allies about who has the most right path forward.

And I wonder if it’s comforting to know that we are not alone?

Five hundred years ago, in another moment of re-formation, there were terrible abuses of the whole population going on. Fear-mongering, telling people they would be punished or rewarded, telling people they could buy their way out of their fearful situations… and into that time of great upheaval came the voices of reformers. Sometimes, reformers said to pick up a sword and fight. Other reformers martyred themselves. Here’s what our namesake, Martin Luther did… mostly, he wrote and wrote and wrote. It’s not as flashy a picture of Luther as the 95 theses nailed to a door, not as dramatic as appearing before the religious authorities and refusing to recant his writings. After the high drama, Luther hid (for years) and translated the Bible to get it in ordinary people’s hands because he was convinced that making God’s word accessible to people was the most transformative and powerful thing he could do. And then when the Bible still wasn’t accessible to ordinary people, he devoted most of the rest of his life to teaching and table talks… deliberating together about what it means that Jesus looks at us and asks us, “What are you seeking?” and stays with us, and invites us to follow, saying… “Come, and you will see.”

This week, a book on the Holocaust came home from the school library. It’s not a new story for me, but I opened the cover and got sucked in. Here’s what I read, “At the start of the twentieth century, Europeans had new opportunities that their ancestors could only have dreamed of. However, such dreams faded as war and economic hardship created fear and suffering. The destruction and instability enabled extreme parties… to take control. A new wave of racism evolved that challenged our deepest beliefs in human nature. The book describes in detail embittered people eager to blame others for their defeat, destabilization of the government, leaders who stirred up public anger and chaos. Increased powers at the top level of government, political opponents rounded up and arrested, and persecution and death of 6 million Jews and 5 million others, including Christians who spoke out against the atrocities. And at the same time, in a whole variety of ways, a whole variety of people sheltered and hid and helped people escape. Most did their work in utter secrecy because discovery meant the end of their lives, the end of their work. In 2005, the United Nations made January 27^th an International Holocaust Remembrance Day (the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp in 1945).

Fifty years ago, in the United States, at another incredibly turbulent time, Martin Luther’s  namesake… the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King prayed and preached, studied and wrote, sat in jail and marched in the streets because the deep grounding of his faith compelled him to engage in the best ways he knew how to do… and he, too, gave his life. Today is the 88^th anniversary of his birth, and we are all invited to commemorate his life and faithful witness at Luther Seminary tomorrow.

When I look back at this history—500 years ago, 100 years ago, 50 years ago—and see the diverse ways that people managed to remain human and care for others in terrifying times… I can only think of Jesus’ invitation. “Come, and you will see.” And see, here’s the thing I believe most deeply, when I can access God’s gift of faith, through my own array of doubts and fears… Jesus doesn’t simply invite us to go into the future on our own. Jesus, who stays with us, goes with us. Jesus didn’t come into the world to show that he was better than us. Jesus came to be with us, to be one of us.

Some of you have been to the exhibit at the MIA, Martin Luther: Art and the Reformation, and if you have been, you cannot have missed the outfit that doctors wore when they visited patients throughout the Plague. The doctors were covered with a scary looking suit with a big mask with a long beaklike nose… in the display, it said something like this. People were almost as afraid of the doctor coming as they were of the plague. People lost half their family. There was no one untouched by this horrific disease. And here’s what Luther said in response. “I cannot tel if the plague will allow me to finish [translating] the Epistle to the Galatians. Rapid and sudeen, it is making great ravages, especially among the young. You advise me to fly. Whither shall I fly? My place is here. Obedience will not permit my flight, till God who has called me recalls me. Not that I do not fear death (for I am not the apostle Paul, I am only his commentator), but I hope that the Lord will deliver me from fear.”[1]   

In this suffering community, Jesus is painted this way… not as the perfect Lamb but as the one who came to get the plague.

One of the lies we are told these days is that this is power: the one with control of the microphones at the press conference, the loudest bully, the one who says all who challenge him are liars, the one who can make the stock market rise and fall at his whim, the one who can give the biggest and best party, the one with the tallest, finest towers. However, as we look back through history, we can see that the way that Jesus has stayed with us, the way Jesus has loved, and how Jesus has been powerful has always been very different from that.

Jesus shows up as the DA in the courtroom, on the streets, with the dying, among the poor, with the grieving, and yes, in little gatherings like this one… around a bowl of water and a taste of bread and sip of a cup… Jesus shows up as we try to figure out what we are seeking by reading the Bible and listening intently for God’s words for today. Jesus stays with us as we pray, “Oh God, where are you? Who are you really? Can we walk with you?” Jesus continues with us, inviting us to move forward with unusual, counter-cultural hope and confidence… not based in naïve trust or blindness to what’s happening around us… but in deep trust in God’s Holy Spirit who has been all of these places and will never leave us, and will never stop giving people the ability to do good in the face of evil.

That’s why King could preach about the promised land on the eve of his death… that’s why so many people sheltered and helped people escape during the Holocaust… that’s why Luther put the Bible into our hands and prayed for courage and love to replace fear. Who knows what we will be called to do this year, and in the coming years, but Jesus invites us, “Come, and you will see.”

In times like this, a prayer that comes to mind is one that I said daily for a year …

“Lord God, you call your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet not traveled, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us, and your love supporting us, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

---

[1] Author Tim Ehring, editor, MIA, new.artsmia.org, November 9, 2016

God leads us forward and brings us home

 

 

 

 

 

Matthew 2 - Epiphany/Holy Innocents                                                     

When we bless homes, we remember the magi… maybe because who knows who might come to visit, who might need a shelter, who might suddenly need our hospitality? Here in Minnesota, although we think of ourselves as friendly, we don’t have the same culture of extensive hospitality that exists in some other parts of the world today… and the culture of hospitality that was absolutely necessary in the time of Jesus. If guests arrived, there was not usually an inn nearby… that was for bigger towns and cities… if guests arrived, most likely, they were staying with you. And so there was a culture around taking in guests that was so much deeper than most of us are used to… For Matthew, it is an incredibly important theme that people far beyond the people of Israel, people of all nations, were part of Jesus’ family ancestry and that people from many nations recognized who Jesus was. This was not only an in-house event… this birth was world-changing.

In just the very first chapters, Matthew has told us the genealogy of Jesus that includes Ruth, a Moabite woman. Mary has traveled across country to be with her cousin Elizabeth… taken in as their houseguest for months. And now we hear the story of the magi—people who have traveled from far away, star-gazers, who have come to find a king… Magi, who made the big mistake of traveling to Herod’s palace (because that would be a natural place to find a king), before being redirected to the humble home of Joseph and Mary (a very unusual place to find a king).

This year, I have wondered how the magi felt—those star-gazers who brought gifts, worshiped the young Jesus… but who in the course of their travels unwittingly unleashed terrible violence… because what followed their visit to Herod (and their refusal to go back and inform him of the location of Jesus…) was a slaughter. How did they feel? Did they realize that although their only goal was to honor and bless this child, they unleashed a fury?

We know too many stories like this one as we’ve watched, heard about, and experienced places of trauma and violence this year: Aleppo, Berlin, Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, Nigeria, Orlando, St. Paul… the horrors God’s beloved children experience are not new and are not over.

In light of these stories from our own days, Matthew’s story of the senseless violence following the birth of Jesus seems all too familiar. Herod, a powerful and paranoid dictator, is worried and angry when he meets the Magi, strange visitors from far out-of-town, who have come to see a king that is not him… he becomes so worried and angry, in fact, that he kills all the children, trying to get rid of that one. It’s a familiar Biblical story because it happened in Moses’ day, too… Leaders tried to kill off the ones who would one day overthrow them… but as we know from any number of books and movies, that approach never works.

Instead, warned by a dream, the family flees. Into the wilderness. In one way, we imagine them as completely alone, refugees fleeing in the dead of night. From another perspective, we know that the whole way, they were accompanied by God, by the angels who warned them to flee, and others trying to escape. They met with hospitality they experience from strangers all along the way to their new, temporary home. There are many art images both of the massacre of the Holy Innocents and of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt—you have one of them on your bulletin cover.

Maybe you’ve heard of a kind of prayer called Lectio Divina—or divine reading—where you read a short Bible passage slowly, listening to each word to hear God’s living word for you today. This morning, I invite you to a practice one of my teachers called Imago Divina… praying with an art image for the same reason, to see and hear God’s living word for you today in this image of the Holy Family’s journey. I’ll begin with some words with the images… then, hopefully the image will begin to speak God’s word for itself.

Do you feel alone, in the wilderness? Are you tired? Maybe there are unexpected oases on the journey… where do you find God providing along the way? Where is there evidence of a being sheltered, even in unfamiliar surroundings? What tragedies or deep sorrows still wait for healing in your life’s journey?

This is a very political story. Today, where is God crying out for justice? For a new way? How did Jesus’ own experience as a refugee in Egypt shape his way of treating foreigners?

John August Swanson, an artist who also painted this story, included his own reflections about what it is like to be uprooted, especially considering those who are migrants, refugees, separated from family because of lack of documents, experiencing persecution.

Swanson says... few people uproot themselves by choice ... Some know where they are going, confident that a better life awaits them. Others are just fleeing, relieved to be alive.  Many never make it.[1]

Who do you know who is uprooted right now? Is there anything that God calls you to do, calls us to do to extend hospitality in the wilderness?

In his musical piece, L'enfance du Christ (English: The Childhood of Christ), an oratorio by the French composer Hector Berlioz, based on the Holy Family's flight into Egypt,

Berlioz imagined that a stranger sheltered the wandering Hebrews in a strange land. After they were repeatedly denied shelter, finally the father of a family of Ishmaelites (in other words, unbelievers) takes pity on them and invites them into his house.

God continues to build bridges between people and surprise us… who would have thought that God intended to provide for them that way? How is God transforming our stories of who is our neighbor?

Our community experiences get passed on through our story-telling. Story-telling is certainly a most important part of these days of Christmas, these days of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, the moment of turning from an old to a new calendar year. Stories are how we interpret our suffering and challenges, how we reinterpret and shape things to move on in life, how we make it through our days, even when it means going to a place we’d never go except with God’s help. Shared stories help us find God’s way into the future together. This is why we tell these stories, and why we need to…  

The birth of Christ does not remove the power of evil from our world, but its light gives us hope and direction, gives us ways to respond personally and together, as we walk with all the stories of "holy innocents" today who have suffered. In our gathering around word and meal, God continues the story--to save us, lift us up, and carry us into a new year, a new era, each new day, and the new ways God will call us to offer hospitality and recognize Christ in the stranger, the visitor, people of all nations. God will work wonders, whatever our intentions and whatever unintended consequences come to be. And we’re invited to be listening and watching, imagining and dreaming as God leads us forward.

God is with us, and God is also for us, promising not only to accompany us through difficult times, offering shelter and sanctuary, but also to bring us to the other side… where there is deep hospitality and a home.

---

[1] John August Swanson website: From Migrations (Aperture, 2000) by Sebastião Salgado

Blessed are you who bear the light...

A portion of Jan Richardson’s poem “Blessed are you who bear the light…”

Blessed are you

in whom

the light lives,

in whom

the brightness blazes—

your heart

a chapel,

an altar where

in the deepest night

can be seen

the fire that

shines forth in you

in unaccountable faith,

in stubborn hope,

in love that illumines

every broken thing

it finds.

From Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons by Jan Richardson, pages 47-48.

Are you the one? Or should we wait?

 Isaiah 35 & Matthew 11

“Are you the one who we’ve been waiting for Jesus? Or what?”

John is in prison. Things are not looking good. Emboldened by God’s Spirit and maybe by the flocks of people coming to receive baptism, John had spoken out against the tyrants of his time—Herod and Herodias—and they heard the critique, were upset, and threw him in prison … and probably at this point in the story, John’s whole sense of God’s plans are called into question. Things are not looking good from the inside of the cell, so he calls out this question to Jesus. “Is there any reason for hope? Are you the one or did I stake my life on this God-mission for nothing?”

Whether or not we’re at John’s level of passion and commitment, we’ve had something like that question go through our minds. It’s a question about purpose, about where we put our hopes, and about wondering from the middle of the story what the end will be.

These past couple of weeks, several of us at Christ have been walking with and praying intently for the Humphrey family of Rock of Ages, the Baptist church that worships in this space right after us. Pastor John Humphrey gave me permission to share with you that their oldest daughter, Jonnay, has been in jail. She was coerced at gunpoint to participate in a robbery, and with the real criminals, she was incarcerated. Her faith has been tested in jail. Doesn’t God hear our prayers? Then, why is she still in the cell? Why is the bail so high? Why did this even happen to her? Knowing she was vulnerable, why didn’t God protect her?

These are the questions we ask God on behalf of Jonnay… these are the questions that rise up from the cell, when all looks bleakest… when it seems as if God is powerless or not acting on behalf of God’s people at all.

And here is what Jesus says in response to John’s deep questions (and ours)—

People who have been unable to walk can now walk. People covered with leprosy are now cleansed. People who could not hear can now hear. People who live in poverty can look forward to a time when there will more than enough…

God will release individuals and systems from these disabling conditions, so that all interactions and relationships take place according to God’s original purposes.[1]

And although some of God’s healing, then and now, is literal—literally, people being given glasses and being able to see—I think that Jesus is not saying that the physical cure is the main thing… because we can all think of so many examples, then and now, of moments when a physical cure just didn’t happen.

In fact, John’s story ends in a bizarre turn of events… with his death.

John’s story ends, but the storyteller seems to be trying to tell us that it is not the end for him, or for the God-movement that he was part of… God’s work continues in Jesus, who is confident that God never gives up offering the world opportunities to become more like heaven.[2] And God’s work continues through “even the least in the kingdom of heaven”… then and now.

Maybe we feel like “the least” as we wait and watch for God’s action… maybe we feel like those exiles Isaiah describes—with weak hands, feeble knees, fearful hearts, obscured vision, hindered hearing, broken bodies, and silent tongues… I imagine that with that long list, there’s none of us who can’t identify because either we have that physical challenge or we have it metaphorically. This season, so many people have been utterly overwhelmed by despair and weariness. Our capacities needed to move through this world have been diminished. We’ve felt sorrow in our bodies, deep in our bones.[3]

But the good news is that God does not abandon us to our despair. Our sorrow will come to an end, and on a day when the sick body will find new life in God, Isaiah says the people of God will: “Come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

It’s not just humans who will benefit, Isaiah describes the whole creation will experience new life… and Isaiah in the end invites us into this life-changing vision, giving us both something to do and something to preach to others (you heard me right, you are all invited to be preachers in your everyday life… sharing your reasons for hope and assurance with those who are bent down by despair and hopelessness).

Here’s the invitation to courage:

Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees.

Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. God will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. God will come and save you.”

That is not our usual picture of vengeance. It’s not our usual picture of payback.

God’s way is to protect and save—and it’s for you… and for everyone who needs to see this life and hear this word from you.

This morning, we’ll act this out. We’ll stand and sing. We’ll confess our sins and hear them forgiven. We’ll pray for people like Jonnay who are incarcerated and for all those who need healing—from physical pain and for all the other kinds of fear and despair that make us unable to move—and we’ll pray for confidence in God who has come in Jesus Christ and will continue to come to save us.

And then at Holy Communion, you are invited up to receive not only the bread and cup, the healing & restoring body of Christ… but to receive prayers personally, through the laying on of hands of another sister or brother in Christ who is clinging with you to the promise that this future that Isaiah and Jesus describe is not just a dream unfulfilled. In fact, it has been and is and will continue to come into being.

So we are invited to watch and walk with Jesus, the One, for signs of the Holy Way, both as we wait and then as waiting comes to an end… and God’s joy breaks through to us.

---

[1] Ron Allen, Commentary on Matthew 11:2-11 at workingpreacher.com, Accessed 12/6/2016.

[2] Ron Allen, Commentary on Matthew 11:2-11 at workingpreacher.com, Accessed 12/6/2016.

[3] Michael Chan, Commentary on Isaiah 35:1-10 at workingpreacher.com, Accessed 12/6/2016.

In the wilderness... glorious signs

Second Sunday of Advent: Isaiah 11 and Matthew 3 

A friend of mine seems to always be watching for stories online… stories of that look like the vision of God as Isaiah paints it… she posts these stories of poor people being lifted up, of enemies reconciling, of violence ending… and she labels them this way. “The kingdom of God is like… [this].”

She is a more subtle John the Baptist…. But as for the original John the Baptist? There was nothing subtle about him! Out from the wilderness he speaks with total clarity, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” He looks like a modern-day Elijah, a prophet inviting people into practices to prepare for a new way of life with God.

And in the part of John’s message that we didn’t print today, John compares this work of getting ready to removing the chaff from the grain. Or in other words, removing the protective covering around the grain that was very important while it was growing and maturing but that is no longer needed since the grain is now fully mature and ready for harvest. I wonder, What is chaff in our lives? “What has outlived its purpose in our lives? What have we convinced ourselves is protecting us when it is not?”[1] What is the chaff this season that could just as well be removed and thrown into the oven for fuel (where it could do far more good than it’s doing clinging to us)?

This reminds me a lot of the kinds of conversations we had together throughout the last month in the forums that Roger and Anne facilitated, as we talked about the book Being Mortal, and asked ourselves and each other, “What do we need to do as we age or face health crises to make life worthwhile, each step of the way?”  What can we do during this season to make life worthwhile? There are moments for acquiring (December can surely feel like that kind of month!) but there are also moments in this season for letting go of what is unnecessary (the chaff) so we can get to the real kernel.

So that’s one image… an image that in ancient language would have been called “purgation” or spiritual cleansing or in today’s terms, “Simplifying.” It’s emptying ourselves to make space for more.

It seems as if we’re being invited through Advent to be open to more.

All month, we’re preparing… for what? For Christmas Day? Well, let’s be honest. For our consumer culture, it all ends on December 25^th when people throw out their trees on the curb, thanking God it’s finally over.  For Christians, this month is getting ready to start. It’s more like the concept behind the Black Belt in Taekwondo. You go through all this training, learn all these forms, and finally you achieve the Black Belt which means, “I’m ready to begin.”

That is what Advent is for us… practices, learning our forms, letting go of what is not needed anymore, and getting ready to be open to God’s fresh new start.

And in that way, perhaps the deep darkness of this month is a gift.
For those of us who feel such pressure to bring God’s justice and peace to people in need right now, to those of us who are impatient with God’s timing, for those who want to move mountains and make a way out of no way…For those who are crushed by their anxiety in not being able to do all and be all… the darkness of Advent blocks out so many things, makes it impossible to see the big picture, means we have to rely on just on what’s right in front of us, God, and each other… as somehow in this deep winter darkness, God is doing something bigger than what we can see, under the ground, in the root system.

When things look bleakest, when we look at what once was a grand tree and now appears to be a chopped-down stump, God’s work is like that strong shoot springing out from the stump, a signal to all of us that God doesn’t leave us in death. God doesn’t leave us lost in the night. God is not done yet. We try to chop these volunteer tree shoots away because this tree’s invading our fences or alleys, and in response, it relentlessly grows. It’s like a body giving birth. Once the labor has begun, there’s no going back for mother or baby… and really, although it’s painful, stressful, strange… we have to go through it to get through to the new life on the other side.

So what practices can we do to get ready for it all to begin again? Well David Whyte, a poet, invites us to be brave in facing the challenges this way:

Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take…

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take²

Here’s where we might start being brave…

In prayer; In paying attention to other people
lighting candles in trust in the darkness and waiting time

Practicing silence and listening

Ramping down vs. ramping up… practicing peace

However we practice, we can know that the final result is not up to us. Remember the dawn at the other end of the dark that Pastor Elizabeth spoke of last Sunday? Remember Isaiah’s lion and ox, and that child with its hand over the snake’s hole (but unharmed)?

God’s vision of wholeness and completion has been around for all of time… and God is not done bringing this vision into being. We watch for God’s signal in the wilderness, flickering like a candle, growing relentlessly from the stump… crying out like a prophet… God is near and so we get ready… to begin again.

² David Whyte, River Flow: New and Selected Poems

---

[1] From Denise Anderson, current Co-Moderator of the PC-USA